News Story

Frictional: PC digital sales "bigger and bigger," rethink exclusivity

Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games has revealed 200,000 sales for its PC only title, and says the PC online market just keeps on growing.

It convinces them this growth is "far from the end" and that studios "might want to think again" about console exclusivity. Amnesia has given them freedom.

For the first 30 days Frictional saw sales of under 40,000 for Amnesia: The Dark Descent but thanks to holiday discounts, which saw Steam knock off 75 percent, they've had sales explode to 200,000, "summarising all sales since release actually puts us in a state that we never imagined being in," said Frictional co-founder Thomas Grip.

"The sales that we have had (and are having) are more than enough to motivate developing a game with the PC as the main (and even only) platform."

"Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth. We think that other developers that consider making their game exclusive to a console might want to think again."

Grip admits they've been very fortunate with Amnesia with very little marketing. "We have been extremely lucky with our media coverage and gotten tons of free PR." Without this success Frictional "would probably be looking for a new publishing deal at this point instead of having the freedom we now have."

They're now "completely financially stable and have enough money to complete our next game without any problems." Staff no longer need to think about getting "proper jobs" now. Frictional Games have been very open about their small studios success with fans.